


Ever the Watcher

by maybeitsjustmyimagination



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Fix-It, Hallucinations, Pain, Suffering, idek how to tag things i'm literally just typing words i associate with the season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 21:43:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8684383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeitsjustmyimagination/pseuds/maybeitsjustmyimagination
Summary: Their finale moments. What we didn't see in the rooftop scene.





	

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE
> 
> okay you've been warned 
> 
> I wanted to write the scene between John and the Machine and see things from his perspective instead. I thought playing it out would help me accept what happened... but that didn't go exactly to plan. Now I am intensely in denial and refuse to believe what we saw was all there was.

Borrowed time.

It was always borrowed time.

Each death a second closer.

Jessica. Joss. Root.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

This time wasn't his. It was theirs. And maybe that's why he'd lived up until now. Those deaths were all leading up to this.

But here on this rooftop - his gun at his hip and hand on the briefcase plugged in above him - rifles pointed and shooting until the men started to blur - maybe this was what he was given this time for. To shuffle the cards; change the game. He couldn't save them. And maybe he was never meant to. But looking over the edge of the rooftop, to the cars below? To the clueless businessmen and the rushing workers. To the reformed assassins and the honest cops. To the man who deserved another shot at the life that was taken from him - the life he deserved. Maybe that was who he was meant to save. Maybe that was enough.

He stole their time. And now it was time to give it back.

This was never how he imagined it. It was meant to be pills on the bed stand, a bottle in his hand. But someone told him he was more than that. Someone taught him that even the loneliest man didn't have to be alone.

The Machine, ever the watcher, wasn't going to let him die alone. He never asked this of her. All he asked was that she protect Finch. And she did. But just because she couldn't save him didn't mean she couldn't still protect him.

Pain spread in his shoulder where he'd been shot. She said nothing, but she had no need. He knew she was there.

The only thing keeping him alive was her voice, giving directions on where next to shoot. He knew it was futile. It was a wonder she tried. They were both going to die there today. But he became aware of something more human in the machine than he'd ever realised. That when it came down to it, both man and machine would still claw their way through their last moments. Fighting to survive. Together.

Her voice had stopped.

The realisation wasn't sudden, but it was there. His eyes were unfocused, his shots hesitant. The first signs of exhaustion began to seep into his body. He felt his body begin to slump. Memories of his childhood that had been untouched in years began to peek through the tears in the seams of his mind. All these years alone, this was where the fight would end.

He continued to shoot, but it was aimless. Instead, he looked up and saw her. Funny how the mind in its most vulnerable moments still feels the need to connect a voice to a body. And of course his mind would pick Root's body. She was the voice the machine chose. She was the one who embodied everything they strove for, everything they were meant to be. She should have lived.

Strange, though, that she should be so far away. He imagined her standing closer - a hand on his shoulder as they waded into the dark together. But there she was, by the stairs, wielding two guns in typical Root fashion. Now his mind was playing games. It happened when you lost a lot of blood. The gunshots sounded real, but at this point he couldn't tell where they were coming from. He could barely tell if his own gun had made any blasts in the last minute.

Yet there the Machine stood, death blooming from her hands as two men with rifles fell.

Perhaps he was gone already. His mind supplying him with a combination of fleeting ideas. One minute he was there, the next minute he was at his father’s funeral. Like a phantom, she faded in and out of his memories and his sight with every blink

 He would've thought the machine would look a little more crisp. A little less bloody.

"John.” The final man fell. It was just the two of them. The ending as it was meant to be.

"John, get up," she said, tucking one hand underneath the pit of his arm, gun still intact. She heaved him upwards with a huff. Her voice was gravellier than before. He’d thought that would’ve been one of the core functions that would have shut down already. He glanced at the briefcase, then to the men on the floor.

" Come on big lug - we're in a hurry."

He could let out no more than a mumble, focusing his eyes long enough to see the cut marks behind her ear. Root’s injuries healed long before her death. His final minutes and his mind was conjuring his friend before him – a strange mix of past and present.

She looked him in the eye. "John, a missile is going to hit in less than 80 seconds. And there are some things we can't survive."

And although it had to be a dream - a fantasy concocted by his deluded and dying imagination by a brain that could not even remember how to form words - he limped with her towards the stairs.

Later he would find himself in the backseat of a car, with a woman who drove like a psychopath in the front - looking a little too imperfect to be false - driving away from the sound of an explosion.

He couldn't tell if he imagined the tremors of the missile or if his body was truly shutting down but he didn't think it mattered. Not much seemed to matter now.

The driver - the machine - Root - was repeating something about a doctor and something else, but the words didn't make sense to his ears. They never buried her body, he remembered. A Jane Doe, not even a gravestone to call her own. Had he seen her last breath? Had Harold? The machine would’ve known. Shaw would’ve known. Root would lie to them, but never to the machine. Never to her.

As if she could read his mind, her hand brushed her hair behind her ear, revealing the scarring once. "She doesn't know. None of them do. There's something more - something even she couldn't pick up on. We’re ghosts, John, and not for the first time. She may be gone now but we're still needed. Consider the clocks reset. When we get you fixed up, we're on the run."

And although John was almost certain none of this was possible, the ticking inside him had stopped. The countdown of borrowed time had terminated, yet here he was. Maybe he and the Machine did die on that rooftop. Maybe his borrowed time had been paid. But there were still people who needed watching after. And the man in the suit, ever the watcher, would be there continuing to do that job.


End file.
